Flanges for spools and reels have been known for a long time. Exemplary of such flanges are disclosed in U.S. D281,482 to Suzuki et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,565,363 to Mizuguchi et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,474,254 to Faulkner, U.S. Pat. No. 1,911,427, U.S. Pat. No. 5,169,086, U.S. D330,506, U.S. Pat. No. 2,597,139, U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,532, U.S. Pat. No. 5,464,171, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,450,441, among others such as U.S. Pat. No. 8,567,037 B2 and commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 8,640,981. These patents are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties. Corrugations and ribs are added to the flanges to provide the flanges with more structural integrity, among other properties.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,464,171 to Ripplinger discloses a reel 180 that rotates about an axis 181, wherein the reel includes a tube 182 that attaches to flanges 184 as shown in FIG. 1 of the present application. U.S. Pat. No. 5,464,171 is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The flanges 184 are provided with radially oriented solid, linear ribs 188, 198 that have one longitudinally unattached edge. Flanges 184 are joined to a barrel 182 to form a reel 180. As is known in the art, such linear ribs are a substantially different structure than corrugations, such as those corrugations disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,567,037 B2.
One problem encountered with prior art reels is that cracks from impacts with the ground may form in the flanges and propagate during use, which may result in undesired structural or functional failure(s) of the reels. Such failure can result in the release of the wires or cables stranded in the reels. The prior art needs meaningful structure to minimize the propagation of these cracks.